Well, in this post
I’ll talk about some little apps (Some are built-in) that makes my N80 more useful for me, there are many others that I can talk about other day, but I think these are the ones I use most of the time …

When I got my N80 I was trying to read some of my e-books using its built-in word and pdf readers, but the fonts, and text distribution on the screen ware not very good, and ware
not helping me to read anything …

This week I just found this site with the great Mobi Reader for download …
There is a bundled desktop application that helps you to convert and synchronize all your e-books, and even has the option for you to buy new e-books …

The process is very simple, you download the application to your desktop, connects your device
(there are versions for other platforms too), selects what e-books you want in your device (you can convert word and PDF documents), and after you sync it you can see the bellow screens in your N80 …

The Mobi Reader list of e-books available.

After you select your e-book, you can see the text, navigate, select text, create bookmarks …

This is the second option, if you do not like the full screen view …

One of the greatest features for me, is that after you close the application, and reopen it, the e-book you ware reading is exactly in the same page, what makes it a lot easier to read

Other great app, but very simpler than the first, is the S60SpotOn, I found it just after my wife wondering why this great cell phone does not has the light option that her old 1100 had
…
This app just solved the problem …

You can start the app

And then use your flash light to make your way in the dark

The next app is one of the greatest I have found, but is just helps me to know what is running right now in my phone when I got that scary message telling me that I have no more
memory available …

This life saver app is Handy Taskman

The next one is just a cool app that every N80 owner gets with the phone, it`s name is Lifeblog
…

When I first opened it, I was thinking that I would be able to use it to write posts in one of my blogs (this one, this about java in Portuguese, or this about java in English), but you can not do that, because Lifeblog uses another strange proprietary protocol, but Flickr is always a lifesaver, they joined nokia and now you can post photos directly from your Lifeblog to your Flickr account …

The process is very simple, just log into your Flickr account, and access the address: http://www.flickr.com/tools/mobile click on the Lifeblog link and get your URL and password (that is different from your flickr default password) …

Open Lifeblog and select “publish to web”

Accept to create a new blog account when prompted, enter your username, password and the URL provided …

Select what access point you want to use, if it is a GPRS access point I suggest you to turn the
optimize images option on.

Select the blog account just created.

Write some title and description to your photo

And hit Options/publish

After that wait a little and your photos are already online …

Yes, I know, Shozu is a lot easier to use if you want your pictures on Flickr

After playing with it a little, I just found that I needed a easy way to control where my money go in the end of the month/year …

But I`m not exactly the “organized” kind of person, so I need an easy way to record what I spend and where I spend my money, and after I tested some apps for Symbian and Java ME, the only usable option I could find was Handy Expense

is has a good UI for entering expenses

Some report options

And some useful reports …

The only bad thing I found about this app, is the missing option to sync it with a desktop companion …

It has an option to export a report to an excel sheet, but you cannot import it in any desktop app
that I know, but I`m working in some excel macros to import it in my money control sheets

But it would be great if this app has some option to export the data in QIF or OFX formats …

And the last, but not least is the bundled music player, it is not a perfect multimedia application,
but I spend a lot of time listening to my MP3 collection while far from my computer, and my N80 is just perfect for it …

The only thing I miss in this app, is the ability to transfer some playlists from my PC to my N80
…

Well, this is my list of apps, that I use almost every day, now I leave some questions …

Is there any better multimedia app for N80 phones? I want one that I could synch with my PC,
transfer playlists, and if possible, use only one app to play music and video files
Second, is there any other financial APP for N80 that I can use and synch with a desktop app?
And last, but not least, can I use my N80 as a remote control for my TV, and Sound?

Thanks for every one that could read to here

And happy new year for you all …

PS.: I`ll never again use MS Word to write blog posts

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Are you bored too with the Music Manager bundled with PC Suite?
I love to listen my MP3 while on the go, but it takes a lot of time to choose what music to take with you with that plain list with all your music …

So I started to look for a way to sync my Windows Media Player, with my already created play lists, and the first thing I noticed was the support for UPnP from my N80 and windows media player …
The problem was: I could not manage it to work, if any one of you can do it, please tell me how
Second, connect as “Media Player” using the USB Data Cable, but there is a problem with my windows or some thing like that, that makes it keep trying to install the driver over and over again …

One more option discarded …

But I did not give it up …

In the third try, I connected my N80 with the USB Data Cable and selected the “data transfer” option, and it appeared in the Windows Explorer as a Removable Drive, and lucky me, Windows Media Player can sync music with any removable drive you connect on your PC …
and you do not need any setup for that, just connect the N80 in the data transfer mode and start moving your music to your N80 …

Look at the screenshot from my N80 Synchronizing with my Windows Media Player …

The next step will be trying to Sync it with iTunes, that way I can carry my Podcasts with me too …

Talking about that, any one of you use any media player for Series 60 that has support for both audio and video, or at least has support for playlists?

Thanks for any tip on that …

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this is the N80 just after I open the box. As you can see, yo get a hand full of accessories with your new N80:

• a stereo ear phone with a microphone, you can use it to listen to your local FM radio stations, change the volume and radio station, listen to your MP3, and start/stop/answer phone calls using the voice commands interface
• one adapter that enables you to use your preferred standard stereo ear phone
• one charger
• one charger adapter, that enables you to use the older Nokia chargers
• one USB data cable, to sync, transfer data and music, … with your computer
• one CD with the Nokia PC Synch and Nokia LifeBlog
• one MiniSD card of 512MB

My first impression was that the phone is, let`s say, “sexy”, but just a little too big.
but After I turned it on I just had good surprises …

What I liked about the phone (in no particular order):

• Big screen with a good resolution
• 2 cameras, the main with 3MP, and the second VGA
• The Wi-Fi connection was perfect and very easy with my access point at home
• the ear phones are very good
• the voice recognition for the contacts is perfect, and recognizes the names you write for the contact, there is no need to record a “name” for each contact you want to call using the voice command
• The built-in PIM is just perfect
• the Synchronization app (PC Sync) is perfect, and synchronized even the pictures for the contacts with outlook in our desktop.
• The build-in Web Browser is a lot better than the “Pocket IE” from windows mobile smart phones.
• The Visual Radio app is just great
• The Logs app that ships with the phone is almost perfect, it keeps track of all made and received calls, started data connections (packet and wi-fi), all these with start time, duration, and data traffic for the data connections.

What I did not liked about the phone (in no particular order):

• The “PopPort” connector does not have a button to release the connected device, and it looks a little too fragile.
• The Music Manager from PC Sync is a too hard to use if you have lots of MP3 in your computer.
• It does not comes with any kind of case.
• The build-in alarm clock only allows one alarm to be configured (yes, I have problems waking up every morning).

here are two pictures of the phone:

After this first impression, I started to make the phone useful for me, and not just for my operator.

Connected the data cable to my computer with PC Sync already installed, and tried to Sync the phone with my Outlook to get my contacts and schedule on the phone
, but the Sync does not started in the first try, I had to figure out that I need to go to the phone, set a user and password in the Sync configuration and set the same one in the PC, after the first 5 minutes of rage I liked this feature

After that it was time to test the camera, and the time was perfect, party at night
A few pictures later, the main camera on the phone is great, the only problem is that the “led flash” is not as good as the ones from the Sony cameras, but for daylight pictures it works well. Night pictures get a little dark.

time to go online, configured my access point at home to allow connections from the N80 MAC, and started surfing, the web browser is just great, the only TIP here is remember to configure your browser to ask what connection to use, otherwise your operator may have already configured it to use always its data connection.

Other TIP for your online experience is looking at Shozu , that I talked about in the last post.

Other thing you should care about is the battery life time, is you use your phone just to make phone calls it will last for about a week, but I think no one that spends money with a Series 60 phone will use it just for making phone calls.
if you use a lot the Wi-Fi connection, your battery will last for about 4 or 5 hours.
if you love some music, and use the N80 as a MP3 player (I use it a lot), your battery will last for about 1 and a half day, but it is just if you turn on the Music Player at 8h and turn it off at 20h as I do.
if you use the Radio application, your battery will last for about 4 days.
access to the memory card consumes a lot of battery, but much less than the blue-tooth or the Wi-Fi connections.

There is a built-in app called Director that allows you to create videos from pictures in your phone or card memory, the videos are really great, you should take a look at them.

After you have it all working, one tip is to get an account at Mobical , you can sync your calendar, contacts and notes with their server using SyncML and have all your data online when you need it. Mobical will send all the configuration to your phone using SMS and you will not need to do any think manually.

and the last thing is the built-in e-mail client, that is integrated into the SMS client, and the MMS client …
All this integration is good, because you can receive an e-mail and send it as MMS, or receive a SMS message and forward it to your friend e-mail address, but it is a little bit confusing too, and the e-mail server configuration is a little hard to find, but once you find it, it is just perfect.

After that, if you receive an e-mail with a word or excel attachment, you can read it with the Quick office application suite, directly in your phone.

Talking about the Quick Office, I could not open any of the PowerPoint presentations I testes with it, but all the Word and excel docs worked perfectly.

I`m with this N80 for about a week now, and these are my first impressions, I still have some questions, and if you know the answers I`ll thank you a lot!

Is there any financial application for Symbian? I want to be able to enter in it all the data when I`m away from home, and the principal thing, is that I want to be able to import this data into a desktop application when I`m home.
Is there any Skype client for the N80?
Is there a place to buy a case for my phone?

Thanks for any comments …

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Shozu rocks
Originally uploaded by urubatan.

Shozu is a great combination of Software and Online-Service that enhances a lot the online experience of any smart phone …
They have support for many SP models and the N80 is one of them (OK, all Symbian and S60 are supported too).

The main idea behind this software is that it makes really transparent the upload of your pictures, videos and music to many of the respectives online services …
and the greatest feature is that is lets you configure what connections it can use to upload your content to the internet.
in my case I have set it up to use only my home and work Wi-Fi connections, that way I`ll not have to pay the over rated data plan from my operator to upload this content …

one simple use of it:
I take a picture (like the one shown here) from my phone`s camera, and it ask`s me if I want to upload it to Flickr, I say yes and start looking for the next picture to take …
in the background Shozu tests if any of the connections is available and if it is, it connects and upload the picture, if it is not, it will wait until one of the configured connections is available to upload it (when I get home for example).

ShoZu has support for Flickr, Youtube, Blogger, E-mail, FTP, Easy Share, and much more …

Besides that, it has also support to save your contacts online, but this feature I do not use, because I already use the Mobical service for that (other time I`ll write about it).

If you want to be really online, take a try with it, but I think it will be a lot better if your Smart Phone has a Wi-Fi connection, or if you have a good data plan within your operator …

Do you know any other online service/software combination that is worth to know?
Which online services do you use with your Symbian phone?

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While I have not finished my review of the N80, I`ll start posting here just some links to other Symbian sites, I hope they an be usefull for others that are starting in this smartphone world too …

Sites about the Symbian OS or Series 60 specific.
All About Symbian Series 60 section
Symbian OS
Series 60
My-Symbian
Symbian One
S60 tips
Symbian Freak
N80 Geek

Themes or Application Downloads
Mobile Themes
Mobile9
Series60v3.com
Symbian OS 9.1 Applications

Whell, this is the initial list of links, I hope they help some one …

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This blog will talk about every thing about Symbian Series 60 3th Edition.

I have a Nokia N80, and I`m playing a litle with it.

I`ll post every thing I find about this model and about general Symbian software and usage.

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